July 11, 2013
Do you have an old family journal or diary from your ancestor? What are you doing with it?
Curt Balmer transcribed his great-grandfather’s journal.
The old journal is a record of John Balmer (1819-1898) and Margaret Ann (Carey) Balmer (1831-1890). The Balmers were born in Ireland and moved to Ontario, Canada. John’s journal recorded how he worked to earn the money he needed to pay for the cross-Atlantic voyage, as well as details of the couple’s life together and experiences in Canada.
Curt Balmer asked how he could post his ancestor’s journal on the Internet. He wanted to get it preserved and made available online so that family members for generations could read it and know their ancestors’ stories. He asked for suggestions on where and how he could post the journal online.
Here are just two of the suggestions I made about where to post the transcript of the family journal online.
First, upload a copy of your family journal transcript to a free website like Scribd.com.
You can see John Balmer’s journal on Scribd.com here: http://bit.ly/135xACz
Scribd lets you upload any book you create and want to share online.
This is a good website for sharing the documents you create with others.
With just one or two clicks you can upload a transcript like this one of John Balmer’s journal.
My second suggestion is to post the journal onto an online family tree website like FamilySearch.
This is easy to do.
Simply find your ancestor on the FamilySearch family tree. If he is not there, add him.
Then click on the “stories” button and copy & paste your journal transcript, pasting it to his story box on that site.
With just a few clicks John Balmer’s autobiography has been easily preserved for your family online on Scribd and on FamilySearch.
What other websites or apps would you suggest for preserving the transcription of this old family autobiography/journal online? Please share them with us in the comments.
I was fortunate enough to have inherited a steamer chest full of old letters, journals, photographs, and lots of other treasures. I have added them all to my private secure on-line family tree and have shared it with my loved ones.
My maternal grandmother kept a daily journal in 1927. I’m slowly working on getting it online. I’ll have scans of the original pages, a transcription, links to relevant info, and short bios that will pop-up for all of the people that are mentioned to make it easier to figure out who is who.
If it is a format that is “book-like,” I’d also recommend the Internet Archive.